V. I. Lenin

Results of Party Week in Moscow and Our Tasks

Written:21 October, 1919First Published:Bulletinofthe CC., R.C.P,(B.)No.7, October 22, 1919Signed:N. Lenin; Published according to the text inBulletinoflbs CC., R.C.P.(B.)Source:Lenin’sCollected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 30, pages 71-75Translated:George HannaTranscription/HTML Markup:David Walters & Robert CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License

During Party Week in Moscow, 13,600 people
    were enrolled in the Party.

This is a huge, quite unexpected success. The entire
    bourgeoisie, and especially the urban petty bourgeoisie, including
    the specialists, officials and office workers who lament the loss
    of their privileged ‘ruling’ position—all these
    gentlemen have recently, particularly during Party Week in Moscow,
    been doing their best to sow panic and to prophesy the imminent
    collapse of Soviet power and the imminent victory of Denikin.

And with what consummate artistry this
    “intellectualist” public wields the weapon of sowing
    panic! And it has indeed become a real weapon in the class
    struggle of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. In periods
    such as the one we are passing through, the petty bourgeoisie
    merges in “one reactionary mass” with the bourgeoisie
    and “passionately” seizes on this weapon.

It is Moscow, where the trading element was especially strong,
    where there was a greater concentration of exploiters, landowners,
    capitalists and rentiers than anywhere else, where capitalist
    development brought together a mass of bourgeois intellectuals,
    where the central state administration produced an especially
    large body of officials-it is Moscow that has furnished an
    exceptionally convenient field for bourgeois tittle-tattle,
    bourgeois malicious talk and bourgeois panic-sowing. The
    successful offensive of Denikin and Yudenich was a
    “factor” that favoured to an extraordinary extent the
    “successes” of this bourgeois weapon.

And yet, when the mass of the proletarians saw Denikin’s
    “successes” and realised all the difficulties, burdens
    and dangers attaching to the title and duties of a Communist at
    the present time, thousands and thousands of them rose up to
    reinforce the Party of Communists, to undertake the incredibly
    heavy burden of state administration.

The success of Soviet power, the success of our Party, is truly
    remarkable!

This success has proved and vividly demonstrated to the people
    of the capital, and then to the whole Republic and the whole
    world, that it is in the proletarian milieu, among the genuine
    representatives of the working people, that the most reliable
    source of the strength and durability of Soviet power is to be
    found. This successful voluntary enrolment in the Party at a time
    of maximum difficulty and danger is a real demonstrationof
    that aspectof the dictatorship of the proletariat which its
    enemies, in their malice, refuse to see but which is valued above
    all by the real friends of the emancipation of labour from the
    capitalist yoke, namely, the special strength of themoral(in the best sense of the word) influence of the
    proletariat (which wields state power) on the masses, thewaysthis influence is exerted.

With state power in their hands, the foremost sections of the
    proletariat have by their example shown the mass of the working
    people, shown them throughout two whole years (an immense period
    for our exceptionally rapid tempo of political development), amodel ofsuch devotion to the interests of the working
    people, such vigour in the struggle against the enemies of the
    working people (against the exploiters in general and against
    “property-owners” and profiteers in particular), such
    firmness in difficult moments, such self-sacrificing resistance to
    the bandits of world imperialism, that the strength of the
    workers’ and peasants’sympathyfor their
    vanguard has provedby itselfcapable of performing
    miracles.

It is indeed a miracle. Workers, who have suffered
    unprecedented torments of hunger, cold, economic ruin and
    devastation, are not only maintaining their cheerful spirit, their
    entire devotion to Soviet power, all the energy of self-sacrifice
    and heroism, but also, despite their lack of training and
    experience, are undertaking the burden of steering the ship of
    state! And this at a moment when the storm has reached the peak of
    its fury ....

The history of our proletarian revolution is full of such
    miracles. They will lead, surely and inevitably, no matter what
    severe trials may be in store, to the full victory of the world
    Soviet republic.

We must take care now thatproperuse is made of the
    new Party members, Particularly great attention must be devoted to
    this task, for it is not an easy one; it is a new task and cannot
    be accomplished by old routines.

Capitalism stifled, suppressed and killed a wealth of talent
    among the workers and working peasants. These talents perished
    under the oppression of want, poverty and the outrage of human
    dignity. It is our duty now to bring out these talents and put
    them to work. The new members who have joined the Party during
    Party Week are undoubtedly for the most part inexperienced arid
    ignorant in matters of state administration. Equally undoubtedly
    these are most devoted, most sincere and capable people from the
    sections of society that capitalism artificiallyheld
    down,reduced to the lowest level and did not allow to
    rise. Among them, however, there ismorestrength,
    vigour, staunchness, directness and sincerity than among other
    sections.

It follows that all Party organisations must give especial
    thought to the employment of these new Party members. They must bemore boldlygiven the most varied kinds of state work,
    they must be tested in practice as rapidly as possible.

Boldness, of course, must not be taken to mean that the new
    members are to be entrustedat oncewith responsible
    posts requiring knowledge they do not possess. We must be bold in
    combating red tape: not for nothing has our Party Programme very
    definitely raised the question of the causes of a certain revival
    of bureaucratic methods and indicated methods of combating it. We
    must be bold in establishing, first of all,supervisionover office workers, officials and specialists by new Party
    members who are well acquainted with the condition of the people,
    their needs and requirements. We must be bold inimmediatelyaffording these new members opportunities for
    developing and displaying their abilities in work ona broad
    scale.We must be bold in breaking with customary routine
    (among us too-quite often, alasi-there is an excessive fear of
    encroaching on established Soviet routine, although sometimes the
    “establishing” has been done not by class-conscious
    Communists, but by old officials and office workers); we must be
    bold in the sense that we must be prepared with revolutionary
    speed to alter the form of work for new Party members so as to
    test them more quickly and to find the appropriate place for
    them.

In many cases new Party members can be given posts where, in
    the course of checking up the conscientiousness with which old
    officials perform their tasks, these Party members will quickly
    learn the job themselves and he able to take it over
    independently. In other cases they can be placed so as to renovate
    and refresh the intermediary links between the mass of workers and
    peasants on the one hand, and the state apparatus on the other. In
    our industrial “chief administrations and central
    boards”, in our agricultural “state farms” there
    are still many, far too many, saboteurs, landowners and
    capitalists in hiding, who harm Soviet power in every
    way. Experienced Party workers in the centre and the localities
    should show their efficiency through their ability to make
    intensive use of the new Party forces for a determined fight
    against this evil.

The Soviet Republic must become a single armed camp where,
    there is a maximum of effort, a maximum economy of forces, a
    maximum reduction of all red tape and unnecessary formalism and a
    maximum simplification of the apparatus which must be not only as
    close as possible to the needs of the masses, but also something
    they can readily understand and participate in independently.

Increased mobilisation of old Party members for army work is
    taking place. This activity must not be weakened in any way, but
    more and more intensified. At the same time, however and with the
    aim of achieving success in the war, we must improve, simplify and
    revitalise our civil administration.

Victory in war goes to the side whose people has greater
    reserves, greater sources of strength and greater endurance.

We have more of all these qualities than the Whites, more than
    the “all-powerful” Anglo-French imperialism, this
    colossus with feet of clay. We have more of them because we can
    draw, and for a long time will continue to draw, more and more
    deeply upon the workers and working peasants, upon those classes
    which were oppressed by capitalism and which everywhere form the
    overwhelming majority of the population. We can draw from this
    most capacious reservoir, for it gives us leaders of the workers
    and peasants in the building of socialism who are the most
    sincere, the most steeled by the burdens of life, the closest to
    the workers and peasants.

Our enemies, whether the Russian or the world bourgeoisie, have
    nothing remotely resembling this reservoir; the ground is more and
    more giving way under their feet; they are being deserted by ever
    greater number of their former supporters among the workers and
    peasants.

That is why, in the last analysis, the victory of Soviet power
    throughout the world is certain and inevitable.

October 21, 1919